U.S. fertility fell to the lowest rate ever recorded since the government began tracking this in 1930. The rate is 1.62 births per woman, which is a 2% drop since 2022.
As Birthgap documentary filmmaker Stephen J. Shaw points out, the reasons for this are varied. Cultural shifts have women waiting longer to have children, which sometimes means that their most fertile years go unused. Infertility is increasingly a problem, even in younger women. And many women think that they’ll have plenty of time only to find out later in life that they don’t. Shaw calls this generation the “unintended childless.”
Why should we care?
Because this will leave an entire generation of young people with a massive amount of old people to support and tank global economies that are built on the concept of regeneration. Demographers say that immigrants could fill this gap but dropping birth rates are happening even in the more populous nations of Africa and South America.
